I. An English climate has made, and makes, so many things which are good and suitable abroad, unsuitable and sometimes pernicious for England.
II. Our coal-fires, whether assisting or assisted by our atmosphere, certainly give us an amount of soot and dirt unknown abroad. At Berlin, all fire-places are stoves, where sometimes coal, sometimes coal and wood are burnt.
This flooring might not stand well either the damp climate, or the smoky atmosphere and amount of flying soot of England: but it would be well worth trying; as also trying to improve it.
By all accounts, a great deal depends upon the manner in which these boards are prepared; a little more or a little less, whether of oil or laque, makes a great and lasting difference. It would never answer to make an English carpenter or painter do this from written or printed directions.
If we obtain a trial of this floor—the best course would be, to let an English carpenter prepare a number of boards and skirtings, of due size, suitable for the new flooring of some few wards in one of Her Majesty’s hospitals, which requires new flooring; then to desire either the proper tradesman, or the Queen’s Minister at Berlin, to order the house-painter, Schonby, No. 5, Michael Kirchplatz, Berlin, to send an experienced, trustworthy foreman, with the proper tools and materials, and for this man, with a complement of English workmen, to prepare the boards.
The mode of cleaning is extremely simple, though of course there is a knack to be learnt; and, like everything else, it can be done well, indifferently, or ill. Any English man or woman accustomed to cleaning would understand the thing in one morning, and would, if he or she opened instead of shutting the mind to the outlandish thing, be proficient in it in a week. All these things sound abstruse on paper, and are far more simple and more easily learnt by seeing done than by reading. The foreman ought to give one or two lessons to one or two Orderlies, or Nurses, as the case may be.
14. Ventilation of Wards.
14. Ventilation.—The amount of fresh air required for ventilation has been hitherto very much underrated, because it has been assumed that the quantity of carbonic acid produced during respiration was the chief noxious gas to be carried off. The total amount of this gas produced by an adult in 24 hours is about 40,000 cubic inches, which in a Barrack room of 16 men would give 370 cubic feet per diem. Allowing 8 hours for the night occupation of such a room, when the doors and windows may be supposed to be shut, the product of carbonic acid would be 123 cubic feet, or about 15½ cubic feet per hour. This large quantity if not speedily carried away would undoubtedly be injurious to health; but there are other gaseous poisons produced with the carbonic acid which have still greater power to injure. Every adult exhales by the lungs and skin 48 ounces or 3 pints of water in 24 hours. Sixteen men in a Barrack-room would therefore exhale in 8 hours 16 pints of water and 15½ cubic feet of carbonic acid in the atmosphere of the room. With the watery vapour there is also exhaled a large quantity of organic matter ready to enter into the putrefactive condition. This is especially the case during the hours of sleep. And as it is a law that all excretions are injurious to health if reintroduced into the system it is easy to understand how the breathing of damp foul air of this kind, and the consequent reintroduction of excrementitious matter into the blood through the functions of respiration will tend to produce disease.
This will be still more the case in sick wards overcrowded with sick, the exhalations from whom are always highly morbid and dangerous, as they are nature’s method of eliminating noxious matter from the body, in order that it may recover health.
A much larger mass of air is required to dilute and carry away these emanations than is generally supposed. And the whole art of ventilation resolves itself into applying in any specific case the best method of renewing the air sufficiently, without producing draughts or occasioning great varieties in temperature.